The Guardian has
viciously & relentlessly attacked ‪#Wikileaks and conducted character
assassination of Julian Assange for years. The Guardian gave space to Nick
Cohen just a few weeks ago (and James Ball himself promoted that awful smear as
"astute & wise" on social media) for a condescending,
vitriol-filled smear of Assange and Assange/Wikileaks supporters (
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/24/nick-cohen-julian-assange-paranoia)
.

This new positioning
via James is reminiscent of tactics often used by right wing political parties,
where one party makes completely outrageous claims and strawman arguments,
subsequently blames the other party for protesting and defending themselves
against those claims then goes on later to say we should "move on",
"compromise" and find some non-existent "middle-ground".
What middle ground? The mudslinging and disinformation campaign has been
carried out by you and directed towards Wikileaks and Assange.

What you need to do,
Guardian, is apologise and correct the false narrative you have built through
misinformation, disinformation and omission.

Then, we can
"move on". You might even get some of your readership back.

In the evening, I wrote a new comment. Comment 2 was also deleted.

Email to Guardian about
Comment 2 Tuesday, July 10, 2012:

Dear
Guardian Moderators,

I am at a
loss. Please explain to me why the following comment was censored from this
article:

Ball and other Guardian writers have consistently
ignored important parts of the Assange and Wikileaks story- including that
Sweden has refused to use standard procedures like mutual legal assistance, to
bring closure to Assange's case in Sweden (but Ball has lamented that the delay
in the case being brought to closure is Assange's fault).

The repeated mis- and half truths have
significantly affected public understanding of facts of the Assange-Sweden case
and understanding of the threat of the Wikileaks Grand Jury to Assange's (and
others') wellbeing. Guardian has made fun of Assange's legitimate concerns,
including death threats and the real risk of extradition to the US. Guardian is
one of the many papers that has written countless stories about Assange (most
of them negative) while hand-wringing that it is Assange's fault and such a
tragedy that Assange, rather than Wikileaks "has become the story".

Repeated articles saying Assange is
"charged", steering of public opinion by omission of facts and using
leading language have been hallmarks of Guardian's coverage of Assange and
Wikileaks.

If you, James Ball and Guardian, have changed your
tune on Assange and Wikileaks, that's great. It's also quite a turnaround from
2 weeks ago when you called Nick Cohen's piece "astute and
wise"."

I do not have a copy of the comment,
but it went something like this -- as I described here in this blog posting put up Garve Scott-Lodge (@g4rve)about another deleted comment:

“I
wrote a comment stating that the use of the quote "victims make
allegations" is either a result of cluelessness or smear. I said that the
women in question went to the police, 1 to compel Assange to take an HIV test
and the other "for support" and that the policewoman on duty determined
that a crime had been committed. I pointed out that, thereafter, the case of
Assange was dismissed once by a senior prosecutor and then resurrected by a
politician-lawyer. I sadi there are many questions about whether Assange is the
perpetrator or victim of a crime. I also said that this use of language
indicates that Guardian still had a ways to go in understanding key concepts.”

The comment was deleted. I wrote another one pointing out the same facts. It
was deleted without so much as a mention.

My
first letter to Guardian Monday,
July 2, 2012

Dear
Guardian,

I would like to know why my comment, my first ever to a Guardian article, and
which received a relatively large number of recommendations, was removed from
your site.I do not see how it breaches "community standards"..

Thanks for your email. Your post was removed because it contained elements
which were deemed legally risky.

Our community standards are clear on this:

6. We will remove any content that may put us in legal jeopardy, such as
potentially libellous or defamatory postings, or material posted in potential
breach of copyright.

Thanks,
Jim

From treisiroon to CIF.moderation Thursday,
July 5, 2012

Thank
you for your reply. Can you clarify in what way my post might be "legally
risky"? I discussed aspects of the case, but they are publicly known facts
of the case, based entirely on the publicly available minutes of the police
interviews. They were neither libelous nor defamatory.

On review:

I
said that the women in question went to the police, 1 to compel Assange to take
an HIV test and the other "for support" and that the policewoman on
duty determined that a crime had been committed.

True
or false? Well, the women state these reasons themselves, according to the
minutes of police interviews.

I
pointed out that the case of Assange was dismissed once by a senior prosecutor
and then resurrected by a politician-lawyer.

True
or false? True. Eva Finne, prosecutor for Stockholm district, dismissed the
case. and Claes Borgström, who is a politician and lawyer, then complained
about that dismissal to Marianne Ny, a more senior prosecutor.

So,
please tell me what I said that resulted in the deletion of the comment from
your website. If it was not one of these two statements, was it then something
else?

With
limited experience of the Guardian comments section, I am trying to understand
why my comments were censored.

Thanks
again for your follow-up,

treisiroon

So far, no response to that email (as of July 10,
2012)

All of this deletion business and the fact that
some really “out there” comments about Assange & Wikileaks (that appear to
me to be violations of several of the community standards) are up on the
Guardian articles prompted me to Tweet:

1 comment:

I said that the women in question went to the police, 1 to compel Assange to take an HIV test and the other "for support" and that the policewoman on duty determined that a crime had been committed.

True or false? Well, the women state these reasons themselves, according to the minutes of police interviews.for example: http://rixstep.com/1/20110204,00.shtml

I pointed out that the case of Assange was dismissed once by a senior prosecutor and then resurrected by a politician-lawyer.

True or false? True. Eva Finne, prosecutor for Stockholm district, dismissed the case. and Claes Borgström, who is a politician and lawyer, then complained about that dismissal to Marianne Ny, a more senior prosecutor.

So actually not true then. The case was opened by a on-call prosecutor, dismissed by Eva Finne, senior prosecutor. This dismissal was appealled by the lawyer representing the two women and reopened by Marianne Ny, even more senior prosecutor. This of course is evidence of the strong legal situation in Sweden, were decisions made by authorities can be appealed.

You post does show something interesting, that you don't understand the Swedish justice system and that Swedish prosecutors have: An absolute duty to prosecute. Absolut åtalsplikt. This means that it's a prosecutors duty to investigate potential crimes and do everything within their power to bring criminals to justice. This has the consequense of victims not being able to withdraw any accusations, which is another telling sign about the strong and safe legal situation in Sweden.

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